Since 2017, the Graduate and Post-Doctoral Education Across the Disciplines SIG #168 has had more than 150 SIG members from Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, Indonesia, New Zealand, Spain, United Arab Emirates, the UK, and the USA.
Dr. Deniece Dortch is an assistant professor of higher education administration at The George Washington University. Dr. Dortch's research and teaching grapples with systemic oppression across multiple axes. She uses critical phenomenological approaches to understanding how African American undergraduate and graduate students experience and respond to race and racism at predominantly white institutions of higher education. Prior to joining the faculty at George Washington University, Dr. Dortch was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Utah where she created the African American Doctoral Scholars Initiative, a comprehensive mentoring program focused on graduate student socialization into the academy. She earned her Ph.D. in Education Leadership & Policy Analysis from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an Ed.M. in Higher & Postsecondary Education from Teachers College, Columbia University and a M.A. in Intercultural Service, Leadership & Management from the School for International Training in Vermont and a B.A. in Spanish from Eastern Michigan University. Dr. Dortch is a returned United States Peace Corps Volunteer who served in both Morocco and Jamaica.
Dr. Stephanie Lezotte has served as Assistant Dean of Rowan’s School of Graduate Studies since 2021. Her published works primarily highlight organizational structures and belief systems that inhibit postsecondary access and success, particularly for underrepresented students and students in STEM fields. Her research has been published in: Journal for Diversity in Higher Education, Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education, Improving Schools, School Science and Mathematics, and Journal for Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice. She earned her B.A. in English from Lebanon Valley College, an M.A. in English from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and her Ph.D. from Rowan University. Dr. Lezotte has been teaching in postsecondary institutions since 2006 and currently teaches courses in Rowan’s M.A. in Higher Education Administration and Ed.D. programs, including higher education administration, strategic planning and budgeting, research methods, literature reviews, and thesis/practicum advisement. She is Rowan’s coordinator for the National Name Exchange and the National GEM Consortium, programs that aim to increase underrepresented students’ participation in graduate studies.
Tamara Bertrand Jones, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Higher Education and Associate Director for the Center for Postsecondary Success at Florida State University (FSU). She uses qualitative methods and critical and feminist theories to examine educational and professional experiences of underrepresented populations in academia. Her previous work as a higher education administrator and program evaluator have influenced her research interests in culturally responsive evaluation and leadership. She is a founder and past president of Sisters of the Academy Institute, an organization that promotes collaborative scholarship and networking among Black women in academia.
Dr. Khanh Q. Tran (he/they) is a first-generation, queer-identifying Vietnamese American immigrant postdoctoral scholar at the Center for Advancing the Teaching and Learning of STEM (CATALYST) at Purdue University. Khanh earned their Ph.D. in Biological Sciences focusing on equity, culturally sustaining pedagogies, and integrated science and engineering education research, and two Bachelors in Biology and Asian American Studies/Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University. Khanh is a science teacher educator and researcher who advocates for social justice science teaching as they believe that STEM could act as a vehicle for social and community transformation. Their work often takes shape in the form of scholarly activism, wherein they critique the status quo of science culture and advocate for the reimagination of teaching and learning science and engineering through centering on the experiences of marginalized communities. They have published in various academic journals, such as Science Education and Physical Review Physics Education Research. Before their academic endeavor, Khanh was a science educator at SF State and University of California at San Francisco, and an Ethnic Studies high school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area. Aside from their scholarly work, Khanh enjoys weightlifting in their spare time, and cooking Vietnamese food as a way to revitalize his cultural roots.
Dr. Annie M. Wofford (she/her/hers) is an Assistant Professor of Higher Education in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies and a Senior Research Associate with the Center for Postsecondary Success at Florida State University. Broadly, her research focuses on understanding and disrupting the structural disparities that typify students’ pathways to and through graduate education, with a specific focus on how to create more equitable structures of support (e.g., mentoring networks) in STEMM fields. Dr. Wofford’s research has been supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Inclusive Graduate Education Network, and she has published independent and collaborative research in many well-regarded journals (e.g., The Journal of Higher Education, The Review of Higher Education, Research in Higher Education). She also serves on the Editorial Board for Studies in Graduate and Postdoctoral Education and the Journal of Women and Gender in Higher Education. Dr. Wofford earned a Ph.D. in Higher Education and Organizational Change at the University of California, Los Angeles and completed a postdoctoral scholar position at Northern Arizona University. She continues to draw on knowledge and expertise from her bachelor’s degree (B.S.E. in Social Studies Education, University of Central Missouri), master’s degree (M.A. Higher Education Administration, University of Missouri-Kansas City), and years of scholar-practitioner experience in medical school graduate admissions to inform her research and engagement.
Jesse McCain is a PhD Candidate in the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia with interdisciplinary coursework in Sociology. His research examines social stratification in higher education, exploring how structural inequalities are manifested and sustained in graduate and professional education. This includes work investigating inequality in faculty mentorship and relational dynamics, pathways through graduate education and career development, and the role of first-generation background and social class in shaping graduate and professional school experiences. He has also been a research assistant for several independent and collaborative studies, including an NSF-funded project about doctoral students’ socialization experiences in the STEM fields, a study focusing on the cultural barriers and assets of first-generation students in law school, and a study exploring the social foundations of equity-minded teaching practices among faculty in the sciences. Before beginning his doctoral studies, Jesse earned an MA in Higher Education and BA in Political Science from the University of Arizona, and worked in university admissions, student recruitment, and academic affairs.
Gabriel Rodríguez Lemus, Jr. (he/él) is a fourth-year doctoral student in the Program in Higher Education Leadership & Policy (PHELP) at The University of Texas at Austin with a dual graduate portfolio in Women & Gender Studies with a specialization in LGBTQ+ Studies and Mexican American Studies & Latinx/a/o Studies. He is a Teaching Assistant for the Department of Women & Gender Studies, College of Liberal Arts. He earned his M.S.Ed. in Higher Education & Student Affairs from Indiana University Bloomington and his B.A. in Sociology, concentration in Community Change from San José State University. Gabriel’s work engages, complicates, & interrogates the ways Latinx/o masculinities is understood, specifically for Queer & Trans* Latinx/o people when navigating academe as it relates to their gender, ethnicity, sexuality, & dis/ability.
Committees Outstanding Publication Committee for 2023 Annual Meeting
Outstanding Dissertation Committee for 2023 Annual Meeting
Graduate and Post-Doctoral Education Across the Disciplines
The new name of this Special Interest Group (“SIG”) is Graduate and Post Doctoral Education Across the Disciplines (hereafter, the “SIG”). Read More
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